You are lucky. I'll be busy, so you get two chapters today. Enjoy. Continuing quote from Lord Byron's Manfred.


oOo


By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy;
By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!

.

The Cloister Bell begins to sound.

He springs to his feet and darts to the console, forcing his swimming head to focus. A quick scan reveals that the TARDIS is about to collide with a huge moon entirely covered in lava. Right. No matter what planes of madness his soul is merrily skipping through at the moment, he probably still is somewhere in the known universe, isn't he?

His hand is at the lever that will take him far away from any danger but he suddenly changes his mind. Let the bloody bell toll for as long as it likes. He makes a few swift calculations, pushes a few buttons, fiddles with several switches, and there: a nice, stable orbit.

(Of course, she's not satisfied, still too close to a fiery death, and makes her irritation known by continuing the ominous ringing noise. As if he needed one more reason to cause him a splitting headache.)

He walks to the doors and opens them wide. Though the landscape far beneath looks very close to traditional depictions of Hell, it still retains a strange kind of beauty; and he stands there gazing at it for far longer than he had expected to.

You really need to lay off Gothic Fiction and the British Romantics. Besides, Byron's an absolutely lousy shot with the darts, you think as you close the doors. A tired, tired part of your brain notices that you avoid a specific spot as you walk around aimlessly. There's no trace of your eighth self ever being there, but you still somehow expect to see phantom blood staining the floor. Look anywhere else.

The lighting is normal now, everything is normal, and when he notices a book carelessly lying on a seat, he even thinks of sitting down and reading.

(The Cloister Bell is still ringing, a steady rhythm like a human heartbeat.)

Of course not. Eleven down, one to go. Come on, what are you, new?

So he sets the book aside instead, and sinks down into the seat, elbows on knees, chin resting on his tangled fingers, and waits.

He stares fixedly at his laces. Nice boots, these.

Something cuts through the numbness, a horrible, resigned dread slowly rising inside him. Like staring down a tidal wave about to hit you, an erupting volcano. Well, what can you do? But that doesn't make it any easier.

(Because there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.)

You suddenly hear a door open somewhere, and you panic, and you wildly wonder what the fastest way to kill yourself is. Oh God. If you collapse on the floor and start screaming your lungs out –and you really have been wanting to do that for some time now– stop, stop, please, maybe he'll let you be.

He screams himself hoarse inside his head instead, silently, bites down on a knuckle, until sheer exhaustion cancels out his agony, and he's quite calm again, if numb and hollow to the marrow of his bones.

A kind of scientific, philosophical detachment takes over him (really, he forces it on himself), and he thinks –though it's starting to get very difficult to do so– that yes, the Daleks have a point after all. "Divine hatred". His reaction is only natural since he doesn't find it remotely beautiful.

Still. Why does he dread his judgment the most?

Boots lighter than yours, the tread is almost silent now that he's not really there. But you still hear it. Childishly, you expect a fiery ghost, a hell-dark demon to match the planet below. But there he stands, across the room, just a pleasant young man with weird hair and a large chin, wearing his Shetland Tweed, eyes a moss-olive green.

Because it was his clothes he found scattered around the TARDIS that first day. Because this face is young, holding all the joy of the universe, but its eyes are old and sad, he decides, the cruel glee of having a foe at their mercy rare and utterly monstrous in them.

Because these eyes are kind, and almost always carrying genuine self-loathing; so when they feel the right to stand accuser and not accused, the terrible, angry darkness in them reflects that you're the lowest of the low, the most wretched of horrors.

And that if he spares you –which he might– you do not deserve it.

(He's smiling and looking around, not at him. And he's quite grateful. Beware the green-eyed monster. It's not envy in this case.)

He pats a wall affectionally and walks forward with that deceptively youthful vigor. Suddenly he stops, spins around, and picks up from the floor a thin piece of cloth that wasn't there a moment ago, holding it up in the air in fascination. The colour is darker than the one that decorates his collar.

(It's the same bow tie you had discovered under the console, that first day, and which you'd picked up too, with a strange mixture of annoyance and reverence. It rests somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS in a cherry wood, silk-lined box, alongside a curl of frizzy blond hair, a short Roman dagger, and the final page of an old book, carefully folded under a pair of round glasses. For remembrance.)

A bittersweet shadow quickly passes over the young face, he turns away, and puts it in his pocket after a great load of fiddling with an uncooperative inner button. Then he adjusts his own bow tie and collar, leans his back on the railing, and looks at the older man.

Oh, now he's the Predator; score one for the Daleks. The boundless energy hides inside. He moves slowly, and he stands still, and you cannot pinpoint exactly the moment the smile leaves his eyes and the arctic cold takes over.

"How's Clara?" he asks.

"She's fine".

"She's also not here". He takes out his screwdriver (the screwdriver, your screwdriver, oh mercy) and scans him, green light, up and down. "That's new…"

"No", he says curtly.

"No?"

"We're not doing the whole…" he gestures with his hands, "'Grand Inquisitor Scene' thing you have in mind. There's no need. Go".

The last word is hoarse and almost pleading but you don't care. Because you know he won't.

"Oh! You've been visiting old Fyodor again, haven't you?" The cheerfulness in the other's voice almost makes him shudder. "Total stick in the mud, he wouldn't give me an autograph, 'too busy'…" He stands on his tiptoes and grabs a leather-bound book from the floor of the upper level (really, Doctor, why do you leave them lying about), and flicks through it. "Not that bad, really. I mean, if that was his problem, tell him I finally finished Crime and Punishment". He casually tosses the book in his general direction and he almost falls off his chair trying to catch it. "Which, when you think about it, is what you should be reading", he adds.

Both of your hearts miss a beat and you put the book down, blindly, somewhere behind you. The temperature might have dropped about twenty degrees. The other is staring at you, ice in the lines of his face, his eyes, and you wonder how on earth you ever managed to fool anyone, anyone, even when you looked so young, impossibly young like that.

The sound of the Cloister Bell seems to die away somewhere in the distance.

"Is this why you lived?"

(Ice in his voice, the pitiless wrath that commanded genocide on the Silence, that wiped the Angels from existence, that forced entire armies to run, that smiled as creatures and men died screaming, as long as they had proved they were worse monsters, more guilty than he was. The voice of a man who has discovered something he can hate more than he does himself. And yet you've never heard such contempt in it.)

He shrinks a little.

"For this!" the other shouts suddenly, opening his arms dramatically and then letting them fall back down by his sides. "For this Gallifrey didn't burn. For this there was hope", he continues quietly, viciously, bearing down on him. "For this the Doctor stayed, the Doctor waited, for this I accepted to die –I, died– on that planet. For this the rules were broken, and you are sitting there, still breathing, right now".

He seems to deflate, walks away and stands by the console, shifting his jaw and looking down. "For you, to go and do such a thing". His voice is now bitter, breaking. "I promised. Not one day. Did you forget? Yes, you can do anything now. Because we were forgiven." He faces him again, gesturing aimlessly with his hand. "Since it obviously wasn't enough… we probably shouldn't have been."

You look at his back as he braces himself against the console, tension radiating from him like heat. You close your eyes, wrack your rotting brain to find anything to say. He seems to read your thoughts, because he rounds on you, eyes blazing, face completely inhuman, the second you open your mouth.

"No. Don't you dare. Not to me. I. DON'T. CARE WHO HE WAS!"

He raises an index finger. "Is that clear?"

("In bed above, we're deep asleep, while greater love lies further deep…")

He backs away, breathing heavily, and the sonic screwdriver is in his hand again, the one he once used to save 2.47 billion children. Because he couldn't just stand there. He never could.

He throws it to spin in the air once, twice, seems to consider it, calms himself down.

Then he throws it at you –you almost hope it will pass through you like the ghost that he is– but your hand rises instinctively to catch or deflect and you snatch it easily. You stare at it, you can't stop looking, you feel sweat running down your face and your breath quickening through your gritted teeth. It burns your palm and drags your shaking arm to the floor.

"Here. To help you remember in the future. If there is one, that is". He smiles, a mockery of a smile, and turns to leave.

You throw the sonic away and you jump to your feet, furious despair giving you the strength to stand, to run, to catch up with him. You grab his forearm in a vice-like grip and turn him violently around to face you, to ask what none of them gave you the chance to utter. But for a few seconds you just glare at him and he looks serenely back.

"What would you have me do?"

It bursts out of him, finally, hopeless anger and pain making his voice a growl.

(He looks down at your restraining hand with an expression of amused surprise, easily pries the fingers off him, and straightens his sleeve. He is silent for a moment, then tilts his head back slightly and looks seriously, thoughtfully at you beneath his pale, nonexistent eyebrows.)

"I'd have you not be cruel… I'd have you not be cowardly", he seems to suppress a sigh or a bitter laugh, "I'd have you be the Doctor".

He vanishes like a spectre and your reaching hand touches nothing. Slowly, you bring it to your chest, your hammering hearts, the writhing black holes that fill your insides, that are your organs. The words echo, hang heavy, indescribably heavy in the air.

He tries to take a step forward and he drops to the floor as if struck by a thunderbolt.

.